During World War II, the Nazis sent Jews to concentration camps and killing centers. Concentration camps were places where Jews were forced to perform hard labors, while the killing centers were places for the extermination of all who arrived. Jews were not aware of what lied ahead on their trip to these horrible places.
Einsatzgruppen
by: Mateo
The Einsatzgruppen or roughly translated to “special-ops units” were the paramilitary groups formed under the Obergruppenfuher Reinhardt Hedrick. They were also operated by the Schutzstaffel before and during World War II. From 1939 the Schutzstaffel Reich Main Security Office had control over the Einsatzgruppen. Their main task during the war was to eliminate all racial and political enemies of the German state. Meaning Jews, Gypsies (Roma), officials of the Soviet state, officials of the Soviet Communist party, and many of the physically and mentally disabled. This mass extermination was part of the German ‘final’ solution to cleansing the gene pool.
The Einsatzgruppen was mostly formed of members from the Ordnungspolizei, the Waffen-SS, and local volunteers. They were lead by the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD officers. These death squads followed Wehrmacht as the moved through Eastern Europe and received on many occasions assistance from the Wehrmacht.
In German occupied territory the Einsatzgruppen enlisted the help of the local populace for additional security and personal. The activities of the Einsatzgruppen were spread through a large pool of soldiers from the SS and the German Reich. The Einsatzgruppen murdered more than one million people according to their own records whom of which were mostly civilians. The began with Polish intellectuals, then eventually by 1941 moved on to killing Jews, gypsies and others throughout most of Eastern Europe. They killed many of their victims in a variety of ways ranging from mass shootings to the more “advanced” gas vans which were vans designed to send car exhaust fumes into a holding area were they put the to be executed prisoners. As an account from commando member Lauer describes, “As the doors were opened, dense smoke emerged, followed by a tangle of crumpled bodies.” This shows that the Germans were also thinking of ways to make mass murders more efficient.
Camp Sites
Chelmno
by: Genica Blanco
The Chelmno Extermination Camp was established in Germany and became operational in December of 1941. Nearby Jews and Gypsies were transported from ghettos to the Chelmno camp site. Every few minutes, groups of 50 to 80 people were forced to undress, hand their belongings to guards. In return they would receive soap bars and or new pairs of clothing. This act got all who were captured thinking they were going to shower. The prisoners were led underground through a cellar leading into gas trucks. Vans began to move from the camp to the forest ovens and pits and as this happened exhaust fumes (Zyklon B Gas) from the engine entered the van causing the people locked inside to suffocate. Anyone who survived the exhaust fumes were shot and thrown into pits the ovens with other Jew and Gypsy corpses. Approximate death total: 350,000. Chelmno Extermination Camp officially inactivated in 1943 and the evidence of torture and deaths were destroyed.
Chelmno Survivor:
Sobibor
by: Asha Smith
Was established in March 1942
Shut down- October 1943
First commandant= Franz Stang
l700 Jewish workers ran the camp itself the campwas divided into 2 camps and into 3 parts
the 3 parts were
Administration
Gas chambers
storage for plundered goods (bodys)
Estimated number of deaths, 250,000, The gas chambers
- gas used was carbon monoxide..
- three gas chambers were added later
There were 47 survivors
Words of the survivor of Sobibor-
"We were obsessed with the idea of avenging our dead and killing the SS … The day after the escape, we were glad to watch the procession of cars carrying the coffins of the murdered Nazis of Sobibor."
Another Sobibor survivor, Hella Fellenbaum-Weiss, recalls being given the will to survive by finding Yiddish notes in the pockets of slain Jews brought to Sobibor from Belzec which read
"We are told we are on our way to work. It is a lie. Avenge us."
Above are some of the survivors of Sobibor. · The camp was strategically placed in relation to the concentrations of Jewish population in the Chelm and Lublin districts · “The site measured roughly 1,300 by 2,000 feet, surrounded by a triple line of barbed wire fencing and guarded by watchtowers. It was sub- divided into a reception area and three camps. The reception area included the spur line and platform which could accommodate up to 20 railroad wagons. Here were also located the administration buildings, armory, and living quarters for the SS and the Ukrainians”
-(Rosenbloom, see citations)
Above is a layout of the Sobibor camp.
Treblinka was a concentration camp that later developed into a killing center, also. These were called Treblinka I and Treblinka II, respectively. They were located strategically between the low-populated villages of Treblinka and Malinka. Jews and non-Jew Polish people were sent here while being told it was a "Labor education camp" when they really worked in nearby gravel pits. The rail line connecting the two different sites was used to transport Jews from Treblinka I and Treblinka II.
The picture above shows Treblinka II. It was hidden from view by having branches woven into barbed-wire fence and planted trees fully surrounding it. 26 foot watch towers looked over the whole camp and surroundings from each of the four corners.
Yitzhak Arad, a veteran from the Nazi-era Jewish Resistance movement said the following on the gas chambers at Treblinka during an interview:
Q. What was the length of the large building containing the gas chambers? A. The gas chambers of the large building were seven by seven. The entire building was thirty-six metres in length and eighteen metres wide.
Q. You could not see the inside of the building of the gas chambers?
A. When the doors were open, I did see them.
Q. When they removed the dead bodies, could you look inside the gas chambers?
A. Yes. The doors were open - they were open almost completely, and when they were opened, the dead bodies fell out, since they had been lying there crowded together. Into a room of 1.90 metres, they forced many inside.
Q. Can you describe the inner structure?
A. It was a room. The floor was somewhat sloping. When the people inside were suffocated, they used to wash the floor with a hosepipe or a bucket of water. When they removed the bodies, they had been suffocated.
Above is a picture of Jews getting deported to Treblinka.
Auschwitz-Birkenau
by: Roxanne Eramela Auschwitz-Birkenau turned into the killing centre where the largest numbers of European Jews were killed during the Holocaust.
It was the Nazi Germany’s largest concentration and extermination camp facility, and located nearby the Polish town of Oshwiecim in Galacia and established by order of Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler on April 27, 1940.
The Auschwitz complex was divided in three major camps: Auschwitz I which was the main camp. Auschwitz II which was established as an extermination camp. And Aushwitz III established as a work camp; there was also a lot of sub-camps.
The children were often killed when they arrived. Children who were born in the camp were generally killed on the spot.
Between 1.3-1.5 million people were killed in gas chambers, more than 90 % were Jews. The other 10 percent were Poles, Soviet Prisoners of War, Sinti Roma, Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals and others.
More people died in Auschwitz than the British and American losses of World War Two combined.
“Camp doctors” such as Josef Mengele “Angel of Death” tortured Jewish children, Gypsy children and many others. Patients were put into pressure chambers, tested with drugs, frozen to death, and exposed to traumas. He did a number on twin studies and were usually murdered after the experiment was over and their bodies dissected.
One of the twins remembers the death of his brother: “"Dr. Mengele had always been more interested in Tibi. I am not sure why - perhaps because he was the older twin. Mengele made several operations on Tibi. One surgery on his spine left my brother paralyzed. He could not walk anymore. Then they took out his sexual organs. After the fourth operation, I did not see Tibi anymore. I cannot tell you how I felt. It is impossible to put into words how I felt. They had taken away my father, my mother, my two older brothers - and now, my twin ...”
Majdanek by: Crystal Pereira
Majdanek was an extermination camp in Lublin. Around 250,000 to 500,000 people have been killed there. People died by massive gun firing and then buried in mass graves. Extermination camp Majdanek states, This action included the machine-gunning of 18,000 Jews in a single day.” They also killed people by sending them to gas chambers. They could kill about 2,000 people simultaneously because of this. Russian soldiers liberated Majdanek on July 24, 1944.
Belzec
By: Crystal Pereira Belzec was another extermination camp that was located in Lublin. The Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity says, “A convoy of forty to sixty cars, containing around 2,500 persons, entered the station.” Before getting killed, men, women, and children were separated. They had to shave their bodies and strip themselves of their belongings and clothes. The people who ran the camp took sorted through the belongings brought. They were told they had to take a shower and get a haircut since they would more camps, but were instead entering a gas chamber where they would die.
Daily Life in "Death Factories"
By: Crystal Pereira
Death factories were Concentration Camps that Jews were sent to in order for them to get exterminated. Every day in a death factory, many people would die from different ways of killing. At Majdanek, for example, people were brought to the camp and had to put down all their belongings, which would never be returned to them. Next they started their process of killing. People were sent to “be washed”, in small boxes and stand naked with some other people, but instead it was a gas chamber. When explaining what happens in the boxes, Inside a Nazi Death Camp, 1944 states, “First some hot air was pumped in from the ceiling and then the pretty pale-blue crystals of Cyclon were showered down on the people, and in the hot wet air they rapidly evaporated. In anything from two to ten minutes everybody was dead. . . “. The boxes were about five square yards and fit about 200 to 250 packed in with you. Such a camp could kill nearly 2,000 people at the same time.
Total Statistics of Dead
by: Asha Smith
Lucie Adelsberger describes the life of the children: "Like the adults, the kids were only a mere bag of bones, without muscles or fat, and the thin skin like pergament scrubbed through and through beyond the hard bones of the skeleton and ignited itself to ulcerated wounds. Abscesses covered the underfed body from the top to the bottom and thus deprived it from the last rest of energy. The mouth was deeply gnawed by noma-abscesses, hollowed out the jaw and perforated the cheeks like cancer". Many decaying bodies were full of water because of the burning hunger, they swelled to shapeless bulks which could not move anymore. Diarrhoea, lasting for weeks, dissolved their irresistant bodies until nothing remained ....."
Death Totals as of late 1943:
Treblinka, (750,000 Jews)
Belzec, (550,000 Jews)
Sobibór, (200,000 Jews)
Chelmno, (150,000 Jews)
Majdanek, (50,000 Jews).
However, Auschwitz continued to operate through the summer of 1944; its final death total was about 1 million Jews and 1 million non-Jews.
Time line of creation of camps
by: Krissy Segismundo
Concentration and killing camps were an essential role in the Nazi's genocide of the Jews. Here is a brief timeline of their history:
1941
Nazis used mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen to begin the systematic mass murder of Jews.
September 1941
Nazis started using gassing vans, which were trucks where Jews were locked in and killed with carbon monoxide.
December 1941
The Nacht and Nebel (Night and Fog) orders were given to military courts to swiftly sentence any Jewish resisters to death.
January 1942
SS Plans were made; Nazi officials agree on the transportation and execution of over 11 million Jews.
At this point, Jews were already placed in the different concentration camps.
Early 1942
Jewish genocide in full motion. Killing Centers Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau), Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibór began operations.
End of 1943
Germans closed down death camps made to specifically kill Jews.
Concentration Camps/Killing Centers
Introduction
By: Krissy SegismundoDuring World War II, the Nazis sent Jews to concentration camps and killing centers. Concentration camps were places where Jews were forced to perform hard labors, while the killing centers were places for the extermination of all who arrived. Jews were not aware of what lied ahead on their trip to these horrible places.
Einsatzgruppen
by: Mateo
The Einsatzgruppen or roughly translated to “special-ops units” were the paramilitary groups formed under the Obergruppenfuher Reinhardt Hedrick. They were also operated by the Schutzstaffel before and during World War II. From 1939 the Schutzstaffel Reich Main Security Office had control over the Einsatzgruppen. Their main task during the war was to eliminate all racial and political enemies of the German state. Meaning Jews, Gypsies (Roma), officials of the Soviet state, officials of the Soviet Communist party, and many of the physically and mentally disabled. This mass extermination was part of the German ‘final’ solution to cleansing the gene pool.The Einsatzgruppen was mostly formed of members from the Ordnungspolizei, the Waffen-SS, and local volunteers. They were lead by the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD officers. These death squads followed Wehrmacht as the moved through Eastern Europe and received on many occasions assistance from the Wehrmacht.
In German occupied territory the Einsatzgruppen enlisted the help of the local populace for additional security and personal. The activities of the Einsatzgruppen were spread through a large pool of soldiers from the SS and the German Reich. The Einsatzgruppen murdered more than one million people according to their own records whom of which were mostly civilians. The began with Polish intellectuals, then eventually by 1941 moved on to killing Jews, gypsies and others throughout most of Eastern Europe. They killed many of their victims in a variety of ways ranging from mass shootings to the more “advanced” gas vans which were vans designed to send car exhaust fumes into a holding area were they put the to be executed prisoners. As an account from commando member Lauer describes, “As the doors were opened, dense smoke emerged, followed by a tangle of crumpled bodies.” This shows that the Germans were also thinking of ways to make mass murders more efficient.
Camp Sites
Chelmno
by: Genica Blanco
The Chelmno Extermination Camp was established in Germany and became operational in December of 1941. Nearby Jews and Gypsies were transported from ghettos to the Chelmno camp site. Every few minutes, groups of 50 to 80 people were forced to undress, hand their belongings to guards. In return they would receive soap bars and or new pairs of clothing. This act got all who were captured thinking they were going to shower. The prisoners were led underground through a cellar leading into gas trucks. Vans began to move from the camp to the forest ovens and pits and as this happened exhaust fumes (Zyklon B Gas) from the engine entered the van causing the people locked inside to suffocate. Anyone who survived the exhaust fumes were shot and thrown into pits the ovens with other Jew and Gypsy corpses. Approximate death total: 350,000. Chelmno Extermination Camp officially inactivated in 1943 and the evidence of torture and deaths were destroyed.
Chelmno Survivor:Sobibor
by: Asha Smith
The gas chambers
Words of the survivor of Sobibor-
"We were obsessed with the idea of avenging our dead and killing the SS … The day after the escape, we were glad to watch the procession of cars carrying the coffins of the murdered Nazis of Sobibor."
Another Sobibor survivor, Hella Fellenbaum-Weiss, recalls being given the will to survive by finding Yiddish notes in the pockets of slain Jews brought to Sobibor from Belzec which read
"We are told we are on our way to work. It is a lie. Avenge us."
Above are some of the survivors of Sobibor.
· The camp was strategically placed in relation to the concentrations of Jewish population in the Chelm and Lublin districts
· “The site measured roughly 1,300 by 2,000 feet, surrounded by a triple line of barbed wire fencing and guarded by watchtowers. It was sub- divided into a reception area and three camps. The reception area included the spur line and platform which could accommodate up to 20 railroad wagons. Here were also located the administration buildings, armory, and living quarters for the SS and the Ukrainians”
-(Rosenbloom, see citations)
Above is a layout of the Sobibor camp.
Video:
**http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hB_ryOXNrk**
Treblinka
by: Krissy Segismundo
The picture above shows Treblinka II. It was hidden from view by having branches woven into barbed-wire fence and planted trees fully surrounding it. 26 foot watch towers looked over the whole camp and surroundings from each of the four corners.
Yitzhak Arad, a veteran from the Nazi-era Jewish Resistance movement said the following on the gas chambers at Treblinka during an interview:
Q. What was the length of the large building containing the gas chambers?
A. The gas chambers of the large building were seven by seven. The entire building was thirty-six metres in length and eighteen metres wide.
Q. You could not see the inside of the building of the gas chambers?
A. When the doors were open, I did see them.
Q. When they removed the dead bodies, could you look inside the gas chambers?
A. Yes. The doors were open - they were open almost completely, and when they were opened, the dead bodies fell out, since they had been lying there crowded together. Into a room of 1.90 metres, they forced many inside.
Q. Can you describe the inner structure?
A. It was a room. The floor was somewhat sloping. When the people inside were suffocated, they used to wash the floor with a hosepipe or a bucket of water. When they removed the bodies, they had been suffocated.
Above is a picture of Jews getting deported to Treblinka.
Auschwitz-Birkenau
by: Roxanne EramelaAuschwitz-Birkenau turned into the killing centre where the largest numbers of European Jews were killed during the Holocaust.
It was the Nazi Germany’s largest concentration and extermination camp facility, and located nearby the Polish town of Oshwiecim in Galacia and established by order of Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler on April 27, 1940.
The Auschwitz complex was divided in three major camps: Auschwitz I which was the main camp. Auschwitz II which was established as an extermination camp. And Aushwitz III established as a work camp; there was also a lot of sub-camps.
The children were often killed when they arrived. Children who were born in the camp were generally killed on the spot.
Between 1.3-1.5 million people were killed in gas chambers, more than 90 % were Jews. The other 10 percent were Poles, Soviet Prisoners of War, Sinti Roma, Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals and others.
More people died in Auschwitz than the British and American losses of World War Two combined.
“Camp doctors” such as Josef Mengele “Angel of Death” tortured Jewish children, Gypsy children and many others. Patients were put into pressure chambers, tested with drugs, frozen to death, and exposed to traumas. He did a number on twin studies and were usually murdered after the experiment was over and their bodies dissected.
One of the twins remembers the death of his brother: “"Dr. Mengele had always been more interested in Tibi. I am not sure why - perhaps because he was the older twin. Mengele made several operations on Tibi. One surgery on his spine left my brother paralyzed. He could not walk anymore. Then they took out his sexual organs. After the fourth operation, I did not see Tibi anymore. I cannot tell you how I felt. It is impossible to put into words how I felt. They had taken away my father, my mother, my two older brothers - and now, my twin ...”
Majdanek by: Crystal Pereira
Majdanek was an extermination camp in Lublin. Around 250,000 to 500,000 people have been killed there. People died by massive gun firing and then buried in mass graves. Extermination camp Majdanek states, This action included the machine-gunning of 18,000 Jews in a single day.” They also killed people by sending them to gas chambers. They could kill about 2,000 people simultaneously because of this. Russian soldiers liberated Majdanek on July 24, 1944.Belzec
By: Crystal PereiraBelzec was another extermination camp that was located in Lublin. The Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity says, “A convoy of forty to sixty cars, containing around 2,500 persons, entered the station.” Before getting killed, men, women, and children were separated. They had to shave their bodies and strip themselves of their belongings and clothes. The people who ran the camp took sorted through the belongings brought. They were told they had to take a shower and get a haircut since they would more camps, but were instead entering a gas chamber where they would die.
Daily Life in "Death Factories"
By: Crystal Pereira
Death factories were Concentration Camps that Jews were sent to in order for them to get exterminated. Every day in a death factory, many people would die from different ways of killing. At Majdanek, for example, people were brought to the camp and had to put down all their belongings, which would never be returned to them. Next they started their process of killing. People were sent to “be washed”, in small boxes and stand naked with some other people, but instead it was a gas chamber. When explaining what happens in the boxes, Inside a Nazi Death Camp, 1944 states, “First some hot air was pumped in from the ceiling and then the pretty pale-blue crystals of Cyclon were showered down on the people, and in the hot wet air they rapidly evaporated. In anything from two to ten minutes everybody was dead. . . “. The boxes were about five square yards and fit about 200 to 250 packed in with you. Such a camp could kill nearly 2,000 people at the same time.Total Statistics of Dead
by: Asha Smith
Lucie Adelsberger describes the life of the children:"Like the adults, the kids were only a mere bag of bones, without muscles or fat, and the thin skin like pergament scrubbed through and through beyond the hard bones of the skeleton and ignited itself to ulcerated wounds. Abscesses covered the underfed body from the top to the bottom and thus deprived it from the last rest of energy. The mouth was deeply gnawed by noma-abscesses, hollowed out the jaw and perforated the cheeks like cancer". Many decaying bodies were full of water because of the burning hunger, they swelled to shapeless bulks which could not move anymore. Diarrhoea, lasting for weeks, dissolved their irresistant bodies until nothing remained ....."
Death Totals as of late 1943:
Treblinka, (750,000 Jews)
Belzec, (550,000 Jews)
Sobibór, (200,000 Jews)
Chelmno, (150,000 Jews)
Majdanek, (50,000 Jews).
However, Auschwitz continued to operate through the summer of 1944; its final death total was about 1 million Jews and 1 million non-Jews.
Time line of creation of camps
by: Krissy Segismundo
Concentration and killing camps were an essential role in the Nazi's genocide of the Jews. Here is a brief timeline of their history:Works Cited
Bollow, Louis. Gate to Hell (Auschwitz). N.p., 2010. Web. 10 May 2010. <http://www.auschwitz.dk/auschwitz.htm>.**
The History Place. N.p., 2000. Web. 10 May 2010. <http://www.historyplace.com/ worldhistory/genocide/holocaust.htm>.
Rosenbloom, Howard. "Sobibor (Poland)." Jewish Virtual Library . Ed. Dr. ArthurBard and Mitchell G. Bard. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2010.
<http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Sobibor.html>.
McCollum, Ian. An Inquiry into the General Lack of Violent Jewish Resistance to
the Holocaust . N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2010.
<http://www.a-human-right.com/jewsfight.html>
Inside a Nazi Death Camp, 1944. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 May 2010.
<http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/maidanek.htm>.
Extermination camp Majdanek. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 May 2010. <http://www.cympm.com/majdanek.html>.
Kotek, Joël. "Extermination Centers." Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Ed. Dinah Shelton. Vol. 1. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 330-334. Holocaust Resources. Web. 10 May 2010.